Love and the Ego

In my spiritual practice, we have a systematic methodology where we get specific initiations to clear our energy centres in a step by step manner. We start with the base chakra – the mooladhara, the energy centre in charge of our basic needs, health, financial safety and stability in life, and move upwards one step at a time. Each initiation is tough, and when one is going through the intense practices to clear these centres, one has many epiphanies, and understandings about the nature of that energy centre, and where our own personal blockages lie. This often means going through some pain – as all that is not in alignment with our highest good comes to surface for release.

As much as I love all energy centers, I know my primary power centre is the heart, so I was extremely excited to get the initiations to work on my heart chakra – also known as Anahata.  As you can guess, the heart centre is primarily in charge of love and compassion, both for ourselves and all that surrounds us. I wanted to understand love more deeply and know all that stands in the way of us keeping our hearts wide open all the time. I have worked on my heart before, and I would say that my heart was more open than most peoples, but each time we do spiritual work, the work gets deeper and more intense.

Knowing the power of these practices, I knew I was in for a ride, and I was right. My heart would get ripped open, all the shadow parts of me out naked to be seen, the most vulnerable, frail parts of me bared. But along with that pain, the rawness, softness and beauty of the fully open heart would be witnessed and revealed.

 

Lessons from the initiations of Love

 

We don’t choose Love, Love chooses us.

 Yes! As much as we think that loving is a choice, it really isn’t. It’s something that is in born and present in us, though we may do much to deny its presence and power.

 

I have been lucky because Love has chosen me over and over again.

It started in childhood, when my heart was still wide open, and I literally loved everything and everyone around me. My first love was my father. He was the most loving human being I knew around me, and he loved me dearly. His presence would light up my heart, and my presence would light up his heart and eyes with the same intensity. However, he used to travel a lot, and his absence caused my little open heart so much pain. I missed him dearly. I couldn’t bear being apart from him, and that’s when the fear started setting in – that he may not come back from one of his travels one day. That something bad would happen. It was crippling fear and I remember lying awake in bed worrying and stressing about it. This was the onset of the Fear that is fundamental in human beings. The fear of being separated from that which we love. Therefore, Fear and Separation are undeniably linked to each other and keep the heart from remaining fully open.  

 Yet, I was shown in this time that throughout life, love chose me again and again. In childhood, in the form of my cousins, aunts, uncles and people around me who somehow, saw me as special and loved me more than they loved the other kids. I even got love from people, who were otherwise perceived of, as incapable of love.

Love chose me through tennis, as I fell in love with the game at 11 years of age, when I started playing. Love chose me through my friendships in boarding school.

Love chose me again, in the form of my children. I remember falling deeply in love, when my first daughter was born. I wasn’t trying to love her, it was just this feeling deep inside that arose in me, which had gotten lost over the years. I couldn’t understand it, how was it I was so in love with this thing, that had just presented itself as a physical reality in my life?

Love chose me again through my relationships. I have had the good fortune of feeling that intense deep love, on more occasion than once. And each time the feeling has gotten stronger and more beautiful, thanks to all the spiritual purification work alongside.

Love chose me through my Coaching work.  where I literally get to love people each day, so they come alive, thrive and shine in life.

Love chose me through my writing, where I get to share about all that I love!

Love is everywhere, and it is our capacity to open our hearts to receive it that makes it a reality for us or not. We don’t choose to love; we choose to be open to it or not.

So why is it that so many on Earth feel like they there is no love around? Why are so many people deeply lonely and sad? Why is there such a massive industry serving people looking for love?

 

Barriers to Love

If there is one word, that I can use to define the barrier to love – then that word is the Ego. The ego however is a complex and slippery slope and not easy to define or understand. So, I will talk about aspects of the Ego that prevent us from both giving and receiving love.

 

We are afraid of love.

This fear shows up in many different forms, some of which I talk about below.

 

Fear 1 – Revealing the true self. Baring our hearts open, means we cannot hide behind the false personalities that the ego created as an armor of protection. An open loving heart, cannot lie, cannot be inauthentic, and cannot be non-integrous towards self or others. And we are afraid to let go of hiding from our own selves and others.

Fear 2 – Being hurt. The nature of the open heart is its rawness, softness, and vulnerability – the filter through which it receives and perceives all experience. There is no armor of protection for the open heart, only an aliveness that is powerful and palpable. Bearing our hearts open, means being vulnerable to pain that others may cause to our raw soft heart. And let me tell you this pain is real and undeniable. To prevent us from feeling this pain, the tendency is to close the heart. In fact, the ego will instill so much fear about this pain into our minds, that it won’t even let the heart open. These defense mechanisms of safety prevent our hearts from feeling pain but also prevent our hearts from letting love in.

Fear 3 – Being seen as weak. Ego loves to pretend to be powerful. An open heart is raw, soft and vulnerable. It has power that is not palpable for the ego. Its way is loving, open, non-judgmental, transformative and soft. Love’s power is undeniable, yet it cannot be seen, only felt. The ego loves to be seen and therefore hates the soft power of love.

Fear 4 – Fear of separation. We are so afraid of being separated from that which we love, that we may not even try to unite with it. This fear comes out when we pretend, we don’t really love someone when we deeply do. Or perhaps we don’t take full ownership of our own heart’s desires. We are not even putting ourselves out there, because we are so afraid, we won’t get it, or that somehow it will be taken away from us.

Fear 5 – Fear of the love being transitory. We have all been there. We fall in love and out of love. How was it that the same thing or person you deeply loved at one point, can feel so repugnant at another. We believe it is because we stopped loving it/them. The reality is that we just stopped allowing our love to flow through to them, and became unable to accept love from them, because of all the above fears. Love is not ephemeral – it is eternal. The ego on the other hand, changes its mind all the time! In my experience, you can never unlove someone you loved, but you can choose not to relate with them, because of practical life circumstances.

 

Other Ego conditions that separate us from love are:

1. Sense of Unworthiness 

When we don’t know how to love and accept ourselves fully, we have a deep sense of unworthiness. We can’t accept that we deserve or should have love, because somewhere inside the ego had made us believe that we are not worthy enough of it. The ego loves to tell you about all the reasons, you are not worthy or deserving of love in the form self-hatred and criticism.

 

2. Inability to receive love 

I have seen this repeatedly in my life. Love is staring people in the face, and they just can’t open themselves to receiving it. I see this is in my work as a coach, in friends, in acquaintances, or people seeking relationships. Love presents itself to us in so many ways – a simple offer of something to eat from someone, or an offer for a ride. And people are so quick to refuse, in the effort of being all independent and powerful. I had a visitor recently who was staying with me for a few days. He had been single for many years, and told me he was happy that way. In the 3 days he was in my home, he refused me many times  – From simply an offer of breakfast, to going out together with a group of friends.  He did not want to make me feel like I had to take care of him. But I wasn’t, I was simply offering little gestures of love. Very quickly I realized, how this person was a classic example, of an inability to receive love. The ego makes one believe that we must work hard for everything, to strive and struggle, so the concept of Love chooses us, is profane for the ego. It just will not receive love.

 

3. The mind – Egoic thinking 

When it comes to love, the ego will come up with its best exercise of free will, pretending that it has a choice on who to love, and how to love. These choices that we make, unwittingly to defend ourselves from pain, push love away from us, even before it has fully arrived. For example, if you went out on a date, and you started analyzing all the pros and cons of the person, without sensing into the feeling that was present around the person, then you know you are caught in the ego trap. You cannot think your way to love, you just must sense and feel into it.

 

To conclude:  

Give yourself permission to accept more love in your life. Let Love choose you and be open to knowing when it does. Say yes! Say yes to life, to people, to experiences. Be receptive. Surrender to the power of love when it does show up. Don’t resist it, fight it, logicalize it, mind it. Simply allow it. I know I have done a lot of resisting to life and love in the past.

And look for places in your life where love has already chosen you and be forever grateful for that.

In loving service to you all.

Photo Credit : Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash